It Doesn’t always go as Planned

The bulk of my posts are forward-looking and positive about how we are taking action and improving our life by controlling our cash and spending on what makes us happy. That is by design. I don’t like dwelling on negativity and tend to put the past behind me, but sometimes it’s important to highlight when the plan goes by the wayside and there is a stretch where things don’t go your way.

Last week, wasn’t our week.

On Tuesday, Mrs. AE found out she didn’t get a promotion she went for after making it through all the interview rounds.

Later on Tuesday, I left work sick and slept for 30 of the next 48 hours, hardly even seeing Little AE, avoiding holding her out of fear of getting her sick. I got behind at work (taking PTO for being sick – the worst), which means I got behind on this site, which means I got behind on all my other obligations.

That cascades into Mrs. AE picking up all the responsibilities around the house. Solo newborn duty, not an easy task.

Just as I was starting to feel better Thursday evening I noticed that the little gal felt warm, we took her temperature and she had a fever of 100.9. A quick call to the nurse’s line and we were sent to the Emergency Room. We ended up staying there for 5 hours, had to watch them draw blood from our 5 week old to check for infections.

Thankfully they didn’t see anything alarming and sent us home, but it was a stress filled experience we could have done without.

It Doesn’t always go as Planned

If you have read any of our Net Worth Updates you might think everything is smooth sailing, quarter in – quarter out. While the overall trend has been positive, it is not always easy. We set yearly goals and have a done a great job hitting them over the last few years, but it hasn’t been without challenge.

Shit will happen that tests your patience. Nothing goes straight up, take a look at any stock market chart for proof.

30 year Dow Jones, plenty of dips

A few other things that haven’t gone our way financially over the last few months…..

There was the $300 nail puncture that forced us to replace our front two tires

A $2,600 tax bill we didn’t plan for

That stressful Emergency Room visit cost another $150

This all happening when we are expecting the final bill for our hospital stay and not earning our full income.

While this is a great venting session for me, I also want to be transparent and show we aren’t immune to bad luck or mistakes. I should have done more work to make sure our employer was withholding enough taxes. We don’t get every promotion we go for even though it may seem like it with all the positivity I blast around here.

We aren’t immune to failure

Money isn’t the only thing that compounds

While the above situations are all fairly normal, everyday occurrences, when they compound together it is easy to lose focus on what you are trying to accomplish. You start coming up with other reasons you can’t hit your goals.

I started looking for the easy way out.

We can tap our Emergency Fund

Let’s cancel our Roth IRA contributions for a few pay periods

Drop the extra amount we are paying on my student loan debt for a few months

While these are all legitimate solutions, my brain NEVER goes to them right away. If we threw in the towel and stopped investing everytime we were dealt a challenge we wouldn’t have made the jumps we have in the last 2 years.

The easy way is tempting when you are focusing on negativity

When things aren’t going your way, look to simplicity

A very simple series of events brought me out of this negativity “funk”

On Friday night, a simple movie night started off the healing process. I don’t know if the dog and Little AE knew we needed a win but all 4 of us ended up on the couch for 2 hours straight relaxing as a family. No barking, no crying.

Saturday Mrs. AE and I went out for lunch and a movie while my parents watched Little AE. It was the first time we were away in just over 5 weeks and it felt good to sit and chat over lunch, just the two of us.

Half way through we got a picture of our daughter laying on the table holding my Dad’s hand. He was staring back at her smiling. Seeing those two bonding put a smile on our face.

Saturday night we met up with some friends who just has a little girl as well to grill some steaks and enjoy the weather.

By Sunday morning, I had forgotten about the previous week, sat down and started coming up with ways to pay the extra expenses. We might still have to tap into our Emergency Fund, but that it what it is there for. We can build it back up when Mrs. AE goes back to work in 6 weeks.

When everything is going wrong, find simple things that bring you happiness and push out the negativity

Take Away

I could some this up really simply and say “shit happens” – which is true, but I think it goes further than that for a few reasons.

When the proverbial shit flys in the face of one of your written goals, you take it personally

The more ambitious you are, the more you will have to fight through

I believe Financial Independence is worth fighting for, occasionally the pursuit will test my resolve, but if it was easy everyone would do it. The quicker you can get passed the bumps, the quicker you can focus on your goals.

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Comments

I love that you’re keeping it real :). It seems like there’s always a compounding effect when it comes to bad things happening and I definitely prefer the money compounding better.

It’s times like that when I have to stop and think about how much LESS stressful it is to be short on a money goal than to not be able to come up with they funds to pay the medical bills, which is unfortunately the situation that so many Americans put themselves in. Emergency fund for win! And I hope your little one is feeling much better!

Sorry for the crappy week last week, Mr. AE. Kudos on the great write up though!

I’m glad the little one is OK – that can be really scary as a new parent. Especially if you have to run to the emergency room… Also, keep finding ways for you and your wife to get out for a little bit – my wife and I haven’t done a great job of this. We’ve only been out 3 times in 7 months :/

It’s great you and little AE are feeling better! Doesn’t it always seem like stressful life events happen in 3s? It can be easy to let it get you down, but I love how you got past the negativity and focused on the moments that brought you happiness. 🙂

We’ve been off our game for a couple of months now. Between the medical bills, travel, and unexpected vet bills, any extra savings went out the window. I’m grateful we have the extra $$$ set aside to take these extra expenses in stride though. Often when you look at the big picture, it’s just a small blip.

Keep your chin up! It seems like bad stuff all likes to happen at once. It’s so rude! I know how you feel. After I bought my house, I had to buy an oven, a fridge, and 4 new tires. I had the money, but it was incredibly stressful!

Doesn’t it suck when uninvited money costs pop up? It seems like every month we’re faced with some kind of new challenge. Hell last month we had to buy Mr. Picky Pincher’s $300 work boots (with $100 from his company to help) and a flat tire. Ugh! But during these times I stay thankful that we changed our lifestyle so we can cover unplanned-for needs or emergencies.

Glad to hear everyone is back on the mend. The first time kids gets sick can be mentally draining. Great to rebound with some family and friend time. Bumps will happen, fighting though helps better prepares you for biggers one down the road.

Great to hear the little one is feeling better. My kids have been sick and with me on business trip that has made things harder at home. You are right, shit happens sometimes and that’s just how life is. You need to realize this and remember to march on.

It’s amazing how these costs just pop up when they’re least expected. I read in Money Magazine a while back that almost 80% of us will have a major negative event happen in any given 10-year period of time, so it’s really just a matter of time. We need to plan ahead for those events.

For our household it’s been health related events with my wife having a massive blood clot that lead to $250,000 in related medical care (most of which was paid for by insurance), as well as various other surgeries and hospitalizations for her and my son over the years.

It’s expensive and a huge drain to have to deal with things like that, but if you plan ahead for contingencies and make your goals a priority – like you have – you’ll be much better off in the end.

When a couple of bad things hit at once, it can feel overwhelming (especially if you and/or your child being sick is part of the equation). But that’s why we prepare with insurance and emergency funds and the like. I’m glad you were able to avoid dwelling on the situation and sought out positivity. That’s good advice no matter what goes wrong.

Good to hear everyone is now feeling better. I love that you were able to see through the difficulties and remember what truly matters. You are so right that it’s worth fighting for and that the path is not always without obstacles. Kudos for not letting last week’s issues completely detour you!

It’s good that you went to the emergency room and even better that Little AE was OK! I can’t even imagine how frightening that was.

How you healed yourself after several blows to the expenses is inspiring. Keep in mind if you feel yourself waivering — as you get closer to FI, unexpected hits to the wallet are less upsetting. They’re more like annoying and inconvenient.

Great post! It’s refreshing to read about the challenges you face rather than the positivity and forward-looking posts. I’ve definitely gone through challenging periods of time that prevented me from getting back on track. Even recently, there have been a number of things, like taxes, that I’ve had to get out of the way. These things have been impacting my consistency with the blog, however, I’m nearing a point of having everything under control again. In tough times like these, I try to look at situations one day at a time. I also routinely remind myself what I’m working towards. Thanks for sharing!

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